Research literature supports that music programmes in prisons can have a therapeutic effect in prisoners’ lives that could promote personal development and assist the process toward desistance. The authors use a meta-synthetic approach to examine 12 qualitative articles published worldwide to explore the therapeutic potential of such programmes. The findings suggest that music programmes in prison are perceived by participating prisoners as a liberating process, which encourages participation and allows for noncoercive personal development. The therapeutic potential of music programmes is located in the combination of the benefits emanating from the effect and practice of music and the creation of mental, spatial and temporal zones of free expression and those that derive from the egalitarian and nonauthoritative approach employed by the facilitators. These findings are discussed along with aspects involved in the provision of offender treatment as well as factors that affect treatment response and engagement.
Notes on contributors
Zetta Kougiali
Zetta Kougiali is a Lecturer in Forensic Psychology at the University of East London. Her research interests lie in the processes and mechanisms of therapeutic change and in the exploration of factors that facilitate desistance and recovery.
Tomer Einat
Tomer Einat is a senior lecturer at the department of criminology in Bar Ilan University. His main research interests are men’s and women’s prisons, the psycho-social impact of prisons on prisoners and prison officers, alternatives to incarceration, and intellectual disabilities, school dropout and criminal behaviour.
Alison Liebling
Alison Liebling is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Cambridge and the Director of the Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre. Her main interests lie in the changing shape and effects of imprisonment; the role of values in criminal justice; and in the role of safety, trust and fairness in shaping the prison experience. Her books include Prisons and their Moral Performance, The Effects of Imprisonment, Legitimacy and Criminal Justice, and The Prison Officer. 
